The Financial Times html5 web app just upgraded on my iPhone.  I say upgraded with some hesitation – the upgrade was anything but graceful.  I will say the end result was positive and I like the upgrade but zero marks to FT for their handling of the upgrade which went like this.  Without warning one of my icons was duplicated.  The new duplicate icon was a shortcut to a safari link – lets call it icon2.  Now it appeared twice – once in its original location, and now strangely the 2nd location was precisely where the FT app used to … Continue reading Basic rules for application upgrades not followed by Financial Times today for their mobile app

There is a general sense among many, myself included that a transformational and structural shift in employment is occurring because of technology impacts.  However it has not been well defined and usually manifests in the shift of labour from established economies to emerging economies such as Mexico, China and those of other emerging Asian countries who exhibited labour costs at 1/10th of established economies. But there is a bigger story.  If it were just a question of labour cost that would be a relatively fleeting change as emerging economies production costs equalise.  Labour costs do not represent structural change.  There … Continue reading Technology is quietly impacting middle class roles beyond manufacturing

I have noticed a trend amongst friends, and we have all read how certain demographics are dropping off Facebook. The trend is very early days, but it is happening.  The trend is towards use of specific purpose applications that work well on mobile devices.  These include communications using Line, Whatsapp, Snapchat, and photo sharing using instagram, Flickr.  Line and Whatsapp are both fast closing in on 1/2 billion users.  They each have their own uniqueness, including richness that text chat miss, including stickers, (non text / non verbal communication), privacy, and most important simplicity on a mobile screen.  Snapchat has … Continue reading Social Networking hits a bump in the road, or worse

There is a growing misrepresentation about how Bircoin will change payments.  I have gone into this earlier.  But today we have a new issue.  Transaction cost. How bitcoin makes transactions cheaper bitcoin, I would have paid much much less than the c. 2.5% it cost me to process your credit card Relevance to Bankwatch: The argument made in this article is that Bitcoin merchant costs are different by not requiring a third party to validate the transaction.  This argument is made because Bitcoin is open because “It allows you to securely and anonymously transfer money to anyone, anywhere in the … Continue reading Bitcoin merchant costs–no evidence to suggest they would be cheaper

With the trickle down news that is worse and worse from Target about the security breach, the details about the nature of the attacks are what I find interesting.  I have been reading a lot about the methods employed in the Target breach and one that immediately caught my eye was the RAM scraper.  Today re/code picked up on that too. Encryption is a word that is thrown around loosely suggesting that it is binary and either on or off.  Consider the RAM Scraper. What the Heck Is a RAM Scraper? So what the heck is a RAM scraper and … Continue reading The old approach of handling card fraud under the radar will no longer work for banks

This is a great story and its about smart software.  John Papandriopoulos is an Aussie one man startup and creator of SnappyCam.  He figured out how to make the iPhone’s camera take full-resolution photos at 20 to 30 frames per second — significantly faster than Apple’s native iPhone camera.  Apple just bought SnappyCam and brought John inhouse. He was able to produce code that made use of fast software that made novel and unique leverage of aspects of the iphone chip and jpg format.  This fits perfectly with Apples integrated view of hardware and software so that they produce the … Continue reading Apple picks up SnappyCam–brilliant example of smart software

Three US senators have proposed to the Senate Banking Committee that they hold hearings on the issue of customer data security following the Target data breach. They specifically seek to address the adoption of EMV in the hearings.  Letter (pdf) Continue reading US Senators seeking to publicise the EMV debate in US following Target breach